Managing a company in the food and beverage industry is a fascinating task.
Food and beverage products are so deeply rooted in the culture of most countries that making and selling them is not only a matter of making and selling good and tasty products, but products that nurture people's body, soul, and heart. Given this, it's not difficult to see that the task quickly becomes complex.
The objective of this course is twofold: first, we will focus on contemporary challenges that managers and entrepreneurs in food and beverage businesses should be able to face; and second, we will provide models and tools to design and implement appropriate courses of action to satisfy customers and build an advantage over the competition.
This course is made up of four modules and an introduction, each exploring one dilemma that food and beverage companies face. You will be presented with a set of video lectures and guest speakers. These lectures combine an accessible introduction to specific topics integrated with interviews of managers and experts that will give precious insights and examples to the participants.
To enhance your learning experience with us, we will make a Documentary on the Excellences of the Modena District available for you, which is in a format that we have developed specifically for this course in order to give you the chance to experience first-hand the territory as our on-campus students usually do.
Each module is paired with an evaluated quiz and weekly discussion forums to reflect on the variety of the F&B world, its complexity, and the power of the network that we will build together during the course.
Successful completion of the quizzes is required for a course certificate as explained in the Grading Policy.
Below the guest speakers of the course:
Masterchef Italia Sky – Nils Hartmann, Head of Movie Channels at Sky Italia – www.masterchef.sky.it
Eataly - Paolo Bongiovanni, Marketing Director Italy – www.eataly.net
Berlucchi – Paolo Ziliani, Owner – www.berlucchi.it
Joia Restaurant – Alta Cucina Naturale – Pietro Leemann, Owner and Chef – www.joia.it
Branca – Nicolò Branca, Owner – www.branca.it
Barilla – Giuseppe Morici, President Region Europe – www.barilla.com
Proyecto Expo 2015 Chile – Guillermo Ariztia, Chile Pavillon Director – www.expomilan.cl
Winery Il Cavallante, Milano – Sergio Morpurgo, Owner
Heineken – Floris Cobelens, Marketing Director – www.heineken.com
TRDN – Martin Oetting, Managing Director – www.trnd.com
GROM – Federico Grom, Owner and Founder – www.grom.it/en
Tetra Pak – Matthew Hatton, Director Competitor Intelligence – www.tetrapak.com
BioHombre – Matteo Panini, CEO – www.hombre.it
Acetaia Maletti – Carmen & Claudio Maletti
Cantine Riunite & CIV – Vanni Lusetti, CEO; Francesca Benini, Sales & Marketing Manager; Elena Lottici, Export Manager; Mario Vandi, Brand Manager – www.riunite.it
GlemGas – Marco Guerzoni, Program Product Manager – www.glemgas.com
Bibendum Catering – LaFranceschetta58 – Sabrina Lazzereschi & Marta Pulini, Owners and Founders – www.bibendumcatering.it , www.franceschetta58.it
DISCLAIMER - Since most of the videos are conducted with those whose native language is not English, we have decided to sometimes preserve their more emphatic speech to keep a tighter match between the audio and the subtitles.

Taught By

Gabriele Troilo

Associate Professor

Transcript

Food and beverage businesses are crowded with small companies and big giants. And so, very often, the debate is, is it important to be small or is it important to be big? I think there is no point here. There are advantages and disadvantages in being small and in being big. The real point from a managerial point of view is how important is the size of the company in building a positioning or an image for a company's self, its brands, or its products. So, what is important, strategically, is in case a small company wants to become big, is to design the growth strategy. So to try to figure out where there are market opportunities to be grabbed, and so by grabbing this opportunity to grow. Obviously, a small company can afford things that a big company cannot and vice versa. For a small company it's important to reach big audiences if it wants to grow, but today there are many different touchpoints that companies can use in order to reach these different and various audiences. So this is a point that we will focus on in this week, how to reach audiences, which kind of touchpoints the company can use, which kind of messages and stories the company can count on in order to bid it's positioning. Obviously if a company wants to compete in different segments in the market, it is very likely that it will use different products, different value propositions, and/or different brands. From a managerial point of view, a very important decision or set of decisions is the managing of the product portfolio of the brand portfolio. And this is a very important topic we would focus on this week. The final point we will cover this week is the organizational change required to support growth. In fact, when small companies grow, everyone is happy in the company. But these people tend to overlook the organizational changes which is required to support this growth. The organizational change should happen at a cultural level, at a structural level, and also the different procedures according to which decisions are taken within the company.

Explore our Catalog

Join for free and get personalized recommendations, updates and offers.

Coursera provides universal access to the world’s best education, partnering with top universities and organizations to offer courses online.